


Just One More Time

by andprosper



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 14:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andprosper/pseuds/andprosper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short and angst-filled look at Harry's unrequited love for Draco Malfoy. Mentions of self-harm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just One More Time

**Author's Note:**

> Most H/D fics, when it includes unrequited love, is Draco pining for Harry. And when there is resorting, Harry is resorted into Slytherin. I did both the other way around. An angsty piece where Harry is pining for a Draco Malfoy who was also sorted into Gryffindor.

I’ve felt like this since first year. The first moment I set eyes on him, I knew. The first night in Gryffindor tower, I didn’t sleep. I watched him. The way his cruel words slide from his lips the moment his eyes shut, fluttering into the air and not returning until the next morning. The long lashes lying safely on his cheeks, the steady rise of his chest, the dark hair splayed on the pillow. I watched mesmerized, and I’ve never stopped watching. I’ve never stopped watching, never stopped wishing I could just reach out and touch him without fear of him waking. Sometimes I’d want to wipe the sweat from his brow, hoping to calm his fitful sleeping as he struggled to free himself from the sheets in his sleep. He had always been a hot sleeper. Even as a young boy, I knew this was the only thing I’d wanted in life. One time in second year, he’d caught me when I slid a strand of hair from his face, an impulse I couldn’t bear to keep to myself. His hand shot out and caught my thin wrist and I thought it was over. I told him I’d gotten up to go to the loo and I’d seen a spider on him. You swallow eight spiders in your sleep every year, you know. He’ll look at me – I feel bare before him. I know that if he looked hard enough he could read all the thoughts I had – all the searing torment-ridden thoughts I have thinking about him. But he never gives any indication he understands. You don’t say, he says. With that, he returns to his sleeping. 

I ache to touch him. But – gods if he knew – he wouldn’t let my filthy hands near him, so every time I reach out to comfort him, to smooth his robes, to just ensure he isn’t the illusion I taunt myself with at night, I let my hand drop. If he knew, he wouldn’t want me touching him. If he knew, he wouldn’t want me alive. If I could stop breathing for him, I would. 

I’m scared of my own thoughts – his piercing gaze catches me from across a room and I know he can read me like a book. Know I’m thinking about him. Know I need him. Know every nerve in my body screams to be near him. Whenever I catch his gaze, I drop it. He can’t know. I’m only safe in my dreams. I’m only happy in my dreams. It’s there where he touches me and utters the word “beautiful,” it’s there where he begs in need for me. In my dreams, he crawls over into my bed, brushes his lips against mine, and whispers a secret to me. Sometimes, when I wake up, I expect to see him lying there beside me, his lithe leg wrapped around mine to assure himself that I’m with him. 

But I’m foolish. Those things would never happen. He started dating at the end of third year – he went through them faster than a Firebolt, but each and every moment he spent looking at them and not me made me ache. That’s when I started. I’d watch the red dilute in the shower, trying to release the burning in my veins for him. If I let enough of it out, would I stop loving him? Maybe just one more time. One more time and maybe I won’t love each and every breath he takes. One more time and maybe I won’t feel like my heart is being ripped out of my chest when his hand twirls in her hair. One more time and maybe I’ll stop watching. No. I’ll never stop watching. 

I sent him an anonymous valentine once. Just a piece of parchment and black ink. And my heart. He looked at the short note snidely and crumpled it up. He tossed it over his shoulder and proceeded to go through the extravagant gifts sent to him by others. I stood in the Great Hall after everyone had left – the only time I felt the need to be away from him. I picked up the note and felt tears prick my eyes when I realized he’d rejected all that I could give him. It had not been paid for in Galleons, but I thought I’d given more than any of his other admirers. The note slid from my hands and I fell to the floor. The only sound in the Great Hall was of my tears hitting the crumpled paper beneath me. When at last tears had stopped blurring my visions, I looked down to see the smudged “I love you” glaring up at me, making me ache worse than that night in the shower when I tried to find a way to overwhelm the sick feeling boiling inside me.

He goes out with Ginny and my wrists itch, desperately screaming to release the terrible illness running through my veins. I leave for my room, not able to think up an excuse for a third shower that day. On rare occasions I have to try and deal with it in different ways. I find the book stored under my mattress and open it to the middle, where worn pages only show. Sanguin Occulus, I murmur under my breath and the text of the pages disappear. Red lines begin inking their way across the page, some angry and thin, some smearing and smudged, some carefully curled and looped. I bring my wand to my finger and a moment later a spot of blood appears at it. I slide my wand onto the nightstand and press my finger to a blank spot on the page, desperately trying to release this monster inside of me, but I hear someone, not someone, him. I know his footsteps well enough and in my raw state, I throw the book across the room, fearing he might see its contents in my hands. He walks into the room, but ignores the book. 

He brings up my blood. My dirty blood that sullies the layers of the book lying helplessly across the room. He says he’s disappointed I didn’t tell him I was half blood – I couldn’t let him go thinking I had been hiding it from him. But I had. I feared that if he knew, and even now he doesn’t know the worst of the truth… I feared he might find me to vile to fill, to love, to need. It takes all of my strength not to scream for mercy from him. Not to scream for him to take me in his arms and whisper syrupy lies in my ear. But he says that I’m not like them. That I’m an exception, but even in that moment, he won’t reach out and touch me. He leaves without any consoling pat on the shoulder or brief hug and I glance over at my book, knowing another smudged entry would be appearing. With a heavy heart I pick it up and look at the name I’ve scribbled all over it in desperation. “Draco. Draco. Draco.” 

I don’t feel I can live any longer. Every time I see him with that dreadful redhead an invisible hand clutches my chest and suffocates me and that ugly monster overtakes me. I can no longer hold down my meals. My body is weak with need for him, but I know as he sits with his lips pressed against hers, that I can only ever be one thing to him. But as I lay with searing hot water pounding against my shoulders and cold tiles desperately trying to take my bare body; as I lay, watching the tinted water sliding down the drain beside me, that if I’m not his everything, I cannot allow myself to be someone’s anything.


End file.
